9 pawnshop employees arrested for faking break-in

CAMP PACIANO RIZAL, Philippines—What was initially reported as a break-in by thieves who bored a tunnel underneath a pawnshop in Calamba City has turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by employees to rip off an insurance company, the police said Saturday.

Senior Superintendent Pascual Muñoz, Laguna police director, said nine employees of Planetwide Pawnshop, which is owned by Tambunting Pawnshops, were arrested and would be charged with qualified theft and obstruction of justice for their participation in the faked burglary.

He said the pawnshop’s branch manager, Rosalinda Soldevilla, confessed to investigators that the robbery report was a hoax and that the missing jewelry was not stolen at all.

“We are looking at an inside job here. The business was losing and we think this was an attempt to rip off their insurance company,” Muñoz said in a telephone interview.

According to Muñoz, the Calamba police received a report around 5 p.m. Friday that the Planetwide Pawnshop, in Barangay (village) Uno, had been burglarized. The thieves supposedly dug their way into the pawnshop’s vault and made off with jewelry worth P1 million. The police, however, became suspicious when they noticed the tunnel appeared to have been dug from inside the pawnshop. They also wondered why the employees reported the alleged theft late in the afternoon when some of them supposedly found out about it as early as 4 a.m.

“They tried to create a scene suggesting that the robbery was carried out by the ‘Igorot’ gang,” Muñoz said, referring to a group of thieves who specialize in breaking into pawnshops by digging tunnels under the establishments and using acetylene torches to open steel vaults.

The police, however, noted that the vault was so thick it could not be opened by simply using a hacksaw the police found at the scene. They also noted that the oxy-acetylene tank found near the vault had not even been used.

Upon questioning, Soldevilla confessed they were not burgled and that they moved the jewelry to another Tambunting-owned shop, the Golden Pawnshop, located in Barangay Paciano, also in Calamba.

Muñoz said the jewelry was indeed in the second pawnshop when police checked, but they needed a warrant to take possession of the jewelry for use as evidence.

“We are still investigating but it looks like the upper management was also aware of the conspiracy,” he claimed.

He said Soldevilla has agreed to turn state witness.